Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Around 3pm Jen left her workplace to drive down to the airport. She arrived about an hour later.

I met her in the parking lot and took her laptop up to my desk. She didn’t want to leave her laptop in her car and also didn’t want to take it with her on the trip, so I offered to lock it in my desk.

We went to the airport and made our way to the gate. To my surprise the airport wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be given that it’s a holiday weekend. Maybe the extra security lines have really helped.

It didn’t look very likely that we would make the flight. We were #9 and #10 on the standby list and the board showed only four remaining seats not sold or checked-in.

(I used my camera phone to snap a photo of Jen in the airport)

As I was trying to mentally prepare myself for a stress-filled evening missing flights, Jen pointed to the gate display screen and said that we got seat assignments! There was only one seat left after us. That’s cutting it pretty close. We had to sit in the very back of the plane (not together) but at least we got on the flight.

Jen studied during the flight and I read my book. The flight up to Chicago was only supposed to be 1 hour and 30 minutes but it took two hours because we (for some reason) circled around the airport for thirty minutes. It’s pretty frustrating when you’re near the destination and they announce the 15-minute marker (that’s when you have to place the seatbacks upright, tray tables away, blah blah blah) but you have to wait much longer.

When we finally landed and taxied to the gate, we deplaned and got on the Avis shuttle bus for the rental car. Beign a ‘preferred’ Avis member is pretty cool. The drive dropped us off near the car and told us what stall it’s in and that the contract and everything is already in the car for us.

Sure enough, our car (A blue Ford Focus) was all ready to go. All I had to do was stop briefly at the exit to show the guy the contract and we were off! I have to say that I’m very pleased with the service that Avis provided.

Jen navigated. She did a wonderful job. It took us only about twenty-five minutes to drive from the airport to the hotel. Due to my inexperience with Chicago, I used Priceline to get us a nice hotel but the only problem is that it’s in the ghetto-side of town. We went to the Hyatt off of Martin Luther King Road.

When we got to the hotel it was jam packed with people and cars. A hotel guy waved us over as I tried to approach the check-in area. I told him that we have reservations but he said that there is no parking! He suggested that we check-in and then try to find someplace to park. I was about to go through with this when Jen suggested we see if the parking deck is truly full.

It’s a good thing I heeded her advice. The parking deck was nearly completely empty!! We got a good parking spot and made our way down to the lobby.

The lobby area was like a zoo. It was packed with people. Jen and I were the only caucasians there, so I felt a little out of place. We quickly checked in and made our way up to our room on the 21st floor.

The room was very nice. We have a king-size bed (with down comforter and feather pillows). The view was spectacular as it looked out toward downtown.

Jen informed me that she had a surprise. She stopped by a liquor store and bought some of those mini-bar sized bottles of alcohol. She got lots of different ones, including chocolate-flavored vodka. We had this in a Pepsi (the vending machines didn’t have coke!). It was great! We each had two of those.

We hung out together in the room and got freshened up. Jen called her brother Scott who coordinated with us to meet him and her Sister and cousins somewhere north of downtown. We went down to the lobby and caught a taxi to our destination.

Once there we met up with Scott, Katie, Brian, Brad, and others. We went to a nearby by and sat outside. It was in the high 70’s but I was freezing. I think I’ve gotten too acclimated to the hot & humid 90’s from Atlanta.

The plan was to go on a ‘pub crawl’ all night long. We are supposed to go along every stop that the ‘L’ train goes and find a new bar until they are all closed.

Our next stop was a cool place called the ‘Tiny Lounge‘. It was pretty small inside and actually reminded me a lot of a lounge in St. Maarten called ‘Sopranos’. I had a chocolate martini which was spectacular. Even the straw was made out of chocolate.

We found an area to sit in the back and all talked for a while. Jen’s cousin Brian was a pretty cool guy. I didn’t get a chance to speak with Brad much.

As we were about to head to the next pub, Jen and I decided to call it a night. We wanted to get an early start tomorrow so we excused ourselves. The cab ride up to this area was around $30 so we decided to take the train to a location a bit closer to our hotel and then get a taxi from there.

We made it back to the hotel and went to bed. We were both quite tired.